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Video Assistance

As a communication company, HOLDCOM continues to look for new and innovative ways to serve our clients. We are happy to announce we have begun creating video content to further assist our clients. These short informative and hands on videos feature live action and close views of our equipment, installation, troubleshooting and more. It's also a great way for you to get to know our staff better. Check out the sample below.



Visit www.holdcom.com/videos for new and updated videos. If you want to learn more about how you can use video to promote your brand or business, come join us at this month's social media mixer here at our HOLDCOM offices. For complete details or to RSVP for this free Social Media event go to http://bit.ly/16wihl

More Instructional Videos

Thoughts On A Rainy Wedding Day

I'm in Montreal for the wedding of an old friend's son. We're at a beautiful lakeside resort just outside the city, the weather... perfect... dappled clouds, warm sunshine glistening off the breeze-driven ripples, temperature in the mid-70's. Ideal to put smiles and optimism in the hearts and minds of the bride, groom, and the guests of the approaching nuptials. All's right with the world. Problem is, that was yesterday. Today, a cool breeze blows a pounding rain across my terrace, and into the heart of the bride, her mother, and the wedding photographers.

Trapped inside, I'm reading the Sunday Times which seems to have an inordinate number of articles today about couples who continue to thrive as creative forces after the romance, and gravitational forces, have ebbed. Another article talks about a Greek tragedy, "The Bacchae," by Euripides, that is "partly about human powerlessness in the face of irrational gods."

Long ago, someone sympathetic to the plight of the bride on a rainy wedding day, said that it is good luck when it rains on your wedding day. Couples who can no longer co-exist on one level, but see a greater good, beat on against the current to create, conquer, prevail, or just usher a younger version of themselves into the world.

The world is a maddening place, be it personal, familial, or business, but there is always a greater good, and a version of happiness and prosperity to be found if one has the vision, resilience, and desire to make it so.

Hey it's raining. I could have gone to the bar.

Wedding Dance

If you're not one of the 6.5 million to date who have seen the now famous YouTube video of the wedding ceremony that had the entrances of all the participants including the bride and groom choreographed (loosely) to the song, Forever, you might want to check it out before reading further. Even if you don't read further you might want to check it out, for a number of reasons:

It's fun to watch and there is a joy in the ceremony that is clearly infectious.

It's a great example of the viral nature of the Internet and YouTube.

And it's also a great example of what can come of something genuine, apparently without an ulterior motive or long range objective (except for some local exhibitionism). The bride was a dancer or had an interest in dancing, so for her wedding, she wanted everyone to dance into the ceremony. She wanted her wedding to be unique, memorable, to entertain her guests. And it did all that.

But like the best marketing campaigns (which it wasn't) it took on a life of itself. After the wedding, the guests wanted to tell others about it, so someone posted the video on YouTube and sent the link to the guests. The rest is history. It was so unique, that the guests had to share it with their friends and the friends with their friends and so on.

The bride and groom and the entire wedding party were invited on network TV shows. They recreated the opening entrances. And they weren't even selling anything (so far), but they could. Anyway, I digress. What's the point? What's the secret?

It was genuine. It was real. In life and in business, keeping it real is a reward unto itself and may bring other rewards, often unimagined.

New Uses For Your Old Cassette tapes

Now that cassette tapes have fallen out of fashion, some clients are asking us what they can do with their old tapes now that they’ve upgraded to new digital equipment. Flickr artist iri5 is turning tape into art! Check out more photos from this artist at http://www.flickr.com/photos/iri5/

Here at HOLDCOM, we’ve always embraced new digital technologies while also being sensitive to our end-user’s technology comfort level. Although these units are still functioning and working fine, the digital conversion that’s sweeping the country has forced the cassette tape into extinction rendering them obsolete. If you’re still using cassette based Message-On-Hold equipment, now’s the time to upgrade.

Unlike the firm date of June 12th for your television system, we don’t have a specific date that cassette tapes will cease being available. With analog cassette tapes in short supply they will soon be obsolete! Since your Message-On-Hold Autoloader system relies upon cassette tapes for program loading, it is now in jeopardy. Now is the time to protect your program and keep it running before cassette tapes become unavailable. To help you make this equipment transition, HOLDCOM has an exclusive offer for our clients still utilizing Cassette Tape load equipment. Join the digital conversion and upgrade your Message-On-Hold equipment. Contact your Client Relations representative at cr@holdcom.com or call us at 800-666-6465 to learn more.

Can't Wait Until Tomorrow

Can't remember who said it or sang it, but there's a line, "I can't wait until tomorrow, because I get better looking every day." Well that's the way I feel about my business. As a service oriented company, we've always done a good job at a good price with responsive quality service, and we've been rewarded in kind. But now with things getting tougher and more competitive, we need to keep striving to keep service up and costs down. It's a challenge but an exciting challenge, especially with all the ideas and solutions available to consider and implement.

In the past couple of months alone we've launched a robust company-wide wiki and an esign solution for our customers, which promise to streamline our internal operations and our sales initiatives respectively.

Our wiki contains or will contain the entire known knowledge of our business universe (I'm feeling like Superman's dad, Jor-El), searchable by a few keystrokes by anyone in our organization who has a question or needs to respond to a question about anything we do. No longer will we need to meet in office doorways for impromptu trips down memory lane to remember "What do we do when this happens?" "Where do I find this?" "What's our policy on that?" I suppose I'll miss some of those doorway meetings, but hey, there's always the water cooler.

Our esign capability will not only fulfill a request from some of our more forward thinking clients for virtual signing capability, it will open up everyone's eyes to the efficiencies and productivity of sending and tracking Orders via a web solution. It will allow all of our Reps to individually track the status of their submitted Orders for viewing, authorization, and response. It provides reminders and alerts to their customers, themselves, and each other. Even for those customers stuck in the fax world, it will allow our Reps to monitor the submission, receipt, and response of those Orders.

There are definitely deeper challenges out there now than ever before, but more possibilities than we ever imagined, with new ones every day. So yeah, I can't wait until tomorrow, because my business is definitely getting better looking every day!

Digital Conversion - It's Not Just For Your Television

June 12th will mark the day television viewing will jump into the twenty-first century with digital transmission of the signal. For those of you who have been using a cable box or satellite system, this day will come and pass with no notice or interruption of service. But for millions of households, June 12th may come as a big surprise when they sit down to relax and watch their favorite television show or sporting event.

The digital bug has bit many industries over the years. Record companies who never thought people would want to buy one song at a time quickly came to an abrupt reality and started negotiating deals with online suppliers like Apple, Rhapsody, and others. Other companies like Kodak were quick to embrace the digital revolution and created on line solution for sharing, storing and ordering prints on line.

Here at HOLDCOM, we’ve always embraced new digital technologies while also being sensitive to our end-user’s technology comfort level. Although many of you have upgraded to new technologies including remote load systems, internet based systems and flash drive & CD based equipment many clients have chosen to stay with their cassette based systems. Although these units are still functioning and working fine, the digital conversion that’s sweeping the country has forced the cassette tape into extinction rendering them obsolete.

Unlike the firm date of June 12th for your television system, we don’t have a specific date that cassette tapes will cease being available. With analog cassette tapes in short supply they will soon be obsolete! Since your Message-On-Hold Autoloader system relies upon cassette tapes for program loading, it is now in jeopardy. Now is the time to protect your program and keep it running before cassette tapes become unavailable.